HURON PLAN OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION
THE CONTROL OF EDUCATION
This diagram illustrates a common type of municipal school administration. The voters choose a Board of Education, or School Board. This body, in turn, appoints a Superintendent of Schools who has supervision over all matters of school management. In some cities the members of the Board of Education are appointed by the mayor. In the larger municipalities there are, as a rule, one or more assistant superintendents.
Make a similar chart showing the organization of the school system in your own community.
A series of present-day questions.
Some Problems of School Organization.—Several problems of great importance are engaging the attention of the school authorities at the present time. The more conspicuous among them may be indicated by a series of questions which are under discussion wherever educators come together, but which are also of direct interest to the pupils and to the community. To what age should school attendance be made compulsory? How can pupils be kept from leaving school before they have received a sufficient amount of education? How should the school course be divided? Should we have junior high schools and junior colleges as well as regular high schools and regular colleges? How may the training of teachers be improved? Can the work of the schools be brought into closer and better contact with the resources of the public library? Is it possible to use the school plant, after school hours, for various forms of community service? Can greater use be made of the school plant during the school day? And where are we going to get the money with which to carry on all these new enterprises if we ultimately agree that they are desirable? This list of questions may seem to contain some that are not related to one another, but they all point to different aspects of the same great problem and may be summed up in the one broad query: What changes in school organization will better enable education to fulfil its three-fold purpose?
Compulsory school attendance.
The School Age.—To what age should attendance be made compulsory? In most of the states this age is now fixed at fourteen years (or grammar school graduation) although some Southern states still maintain the twelve-year limit. Many believe that even the fourteen-year limit is not high enough and are urging that it be raised. In some states a step in this direction has been taken by requiring that all persons under sixteen years of age who engage in any form of wage-earning employment must either present a certificate of graduation from grammar school or must attend continuation classes for so many hours per week. More urgent than any raising of the school age, however, is the need for more strictly enforcing the rules which now exist. In some communities the present age limit of fourteen years is not insisted upon, with the result that many thousands in the backward rural sections and in the crowded districts of cities are growing up in illiteracy. Whatever the age limit it ought to be enforced to the letter.[[246]]
The present school divisions.